Ymir was losing.
Not slowly.
Not in some distant, manageable way he could ignore for another minute.
Now.
Right now.
The knife shook in his hand hard enough that he could feel the weakness running all the way up his arm. Blood had soaked through the bandage at his stomach again, warm and sticky under his shirt, and every breath felt thinner than the one before it. The kitchen kept tipping in and out of focus around him—counter, chair, window, Kane—everything going sharp and then soft and then sharp again.
Kane kept coming.
Not fast.
Not wild.
Just steady.
Like he already knew Ymir was running out of body to fight with.
Ymir backed up a half-step and his heel caught on the leg of the fallen chair. Pain tore through his middle so violently he almost dropped the knife right there.
“Fuck—”
Kane moved in again.
Closer.
The scissors flashed once in his hand, low and controlled.
Ymir brought the knife up on instinct, shoulders tightening, vision narrowing down to the space between them.
He couldn’t keep doing this.
He knew it.
His body knew it.
The room knew it.
Somewhere outside, sirens screamed closer.
Hope hit him so hard it almost felt like fear.
Kane heard them too.
And didn’t stop.
The sirens were close now.
Not vague anymore.
Not distant.
They tore through the quiet outside in sharp, rising waves, bouncing off the windows and walls and coming back wrong through the kitchen like the house itself was trying to swallow them. Ymir heard them and felt something ugly and desperate crack open in his chest.
Help.
Finally.
Just a few more seconds.
He only had to hold out a few more seconds.
Kane stepped in again, and Ymir understood instantly that he’d heard the sirens too—and whatever calculation had been running behind his eyes had just changed.
Ymir tightened his grip on the knife.
Or tried to.
His hand barely listened now. His fingers felt slow, clumsy, wrong around the handle, slick where sweat and blood had mixed together. He sucked in a breath that didn’t fill his lungs properly and braced himself against the counter with the edge of his hip.
The front of the house exploded with noise.
A door.
Voices.
Heavy footsteps.
“POLICE!”
The shout hit the house hard enough to rattle something inside Ymir loose. His head snapped toward the sound on pure instinct, hope surging up too fast, too bright, and for one disastrous second his focus left Kane entirely.
That was all Kane needed.
He came forward fast—
not frantic, not wild, just suddenly there—
and Ymir reacted without thinking.
The knife drove forward.
Not aimed.
Not planned.
Just panic and pain and survival and the sheer animal need to keep something out of his body one second longer.
It connected.
The sensation ran up through Ymir’s arm before his mind fully processed it—the resistance, then the give, then the impossible fact of Kane’s body stopping against the force of him.
Kane’s breath caught.
His body went still.
For one awful, suspended second, neither of them moved.
Ymir stared.
The knife was in him.
In Kane.
His own hand still locked around the handle.
“No,” Ymir heard himself say.
The word came out thin. Barely there.
“No, I—”
Kane’s eyes lifted to his.
Not angry.
Not shocked.
Just… there.
Then the strength went out of him all at once.
His body sagged forward first, forcing the knife harder for half a heartbeat before the rest of him slipped sideways. Ymir’s hand jerked away instinctively, the weapon tearing free with a motion that made his stomach turn violently.
Kane hit the floor hard.
The sound cracked through the kitchen just as officers flooded into the doorway.
“DROP THE WEAPON!”
The command hit Ymir like a blow.
He looked up too slowly.
The room blurred again, then sharpened in painful, ugly fragments—dark uniforms, guns raised, one officer stepping left, another right, all of them shouting now at once.
“DROP IT!”
“ON THE GROUND—NOW!”
Ymir looked down.
The knife was still in his hand.
His fingers spasmed open automatically.
It clattered onto the tile.
“He—” Ymir started, his voice cracking. He tried again, louder, desperate. “He was—”
No one listened.
They saw:
Ymir standing.
Bloody.
Armed.
Kane on the floor.
That was enough.
“Get on the ground!”
Ymir swayed where he stood, one hand instinctively starting back toward his stomach. “No, listen—”
“DOWN!”
He tried to lower himself.
Really, he did.
But his body was already halfway gone, his legs giving under him unevenly, the floor rushing up too fast. He barely caught himself before his knees hit the tile.
Then hands were on him.
Hard.
Too many at once.
His shoulder slammed down first, then his cheek, then his injured side brushed the floor and pain tore through him so violently he couldn’t even scream properly.
“No—no—!” he gasped.
An officer pinned one arm behind his back.
Another shoved his other wrist down.
Ymir’s vision blew out white for a second.
“Stop moving!”
“I’m not—I’m not—” he choked.
The hand at his back forced his arm higher.
Metal snapped around one wrist.
Then the other.
The kitchen floor was cold against his face.
He could smell bleach under the blood now. Soap. Dust. The ordinary smell of somebody else’s house. It felt insane that the room could still smell like anything normal.
“He attacked me,” Ymir rasped, not even sure who he was saying it to. “He—Mira—”
The words broke apart.
Not enough air.
Too much pain.
One officer stayed on him.
Another dropped immediately to Kane’s side.
“We’ve got one down!” someone shouted.
The words hit Ymir harder than the cuffs had.
One down.
Like Kane was the casualty.
Like Ymir was the threat.
Like the room hadn’t turned itself upside down while no one was looking and now the whole world had walked in on the wrong angle and decided that was the truth.
“No,” he whispered.
His cheek pressed harder into tile as they held him there, one knee digging into his back.
“No, you don’t understand—”
But the house was too loud now.
The police.
The sirens outside.
The radio chatter.
The footsteps.
The medics rushing in.
And under all of it—
the truth disappearing.
Boots thundered across the kitchen floor. Radios crackled. Someone shoved past the officers holding Ymir down, a medic’s voice cutting through the chaos—sharp, practiced, already focused somewhere else.
“Move—move—let me through—”
Ymir couldn’t lift his head.
A hand stayed pressed between his shoulder blades, pinning him hard against the tile, one knee digging into his back with enough pressure to keep him from even trying to push up again. His arms were wrenched behind him, wrists locked in metal, his fingers still twitching faintly from where they had been gripping the knife seconds ago.
He turned his face just enough to see.
Kane lay on his side near the edge of the kitchen, one arm twisted awkwardly under him, the other half-curled toward his chest like the movement had been interrupted. The floor beneath him was darker now, the spreading stain uneven, pooling in the grooves between the tiles.
A medic dropped beside him.
Then another.
“Sir, can you hear me?” one of them called, already rolling Kane slightly onto his back.
His head lolled.
No response.
“Check airway—”
“I’ve got it—”
Hands moved fast. Controlled. Efficient. They tilted his head back, checked his mouth, pressed fingers to his neck.
“No pulse.”
The words landed like a dropped weight.
Ymir’s chest seized.
“No—” he said, or tried to.
It came out broken.
Too quiet.
No one heard it.
“Start compressions.”
The medic shifted immediately, locking his hands together and driving them down hard against Kane’s chest. The motion was brutal in its rhythm, purposeful and relentless, the sound of it echoing in the kitchen in a way that made Ymir’s stomach turn.
One.
Two.
Three.
Another medic tore open packaging, movements quick and precise. “Bag him—”
“On it—”
A mask came down over Kane’s face. Air forced in. Chest rising unnaturally, falling again under the next compression.
The cycle repeated.
Relentless.
Mechanical.
Wrong.
“He attacked me,” Ymir said again, louder this time, the words tearing out of him. “He—he was—”
The officer’s hand pressed harder into his back.
“Stay still.”
“I’m not—listen—he—”
His voice fractured again, dragged apart by the effort it took just to breathe.
Another officer crouched briefly near him, eyes flicking over his blood-soaked shirt, the bandage, the mess of him. “Suspect’s injured,” he said into his radio. “Stab wound, abdomen. Still conscious.”
Suspect.
The word didn’t land right.
Ymir blinked hard, trying to clear the blur in his vision, trying to get his brain to catch up with what was happening in front of him.
They weren’t looking at Kane like a threat.
They weren’t looking at Kane like anything dangerous at all.
They were trying to save him.
“No pulse,” one of the medics repeated, sharper now. “Continue—”
The compressions didn’t stop.
Another breath forced in.
Another push down.
Ymir’s head spun.
“He was trying to kill me,” he said, more quietly now, like maybe saying it softer would make someone actually hear it. “He—”
Nothing.
Just movement.
Just noise.
Just the overwhelming certainty that the entire room had already decided what had happened and there was no space left for anything else.
“Clear—”
Ymir flinched instinctively at the word, even though he couldn’t see the defibrillator being set.
A sharp jolt.
Kane’s body reacted under it, lifting slightly before settling again.
“Check—”
A beat.
Too long.
“No pulse.”
The words came flatter this time.
Less hopeful.
More final.
Ymir’s stomach twisted hard enough to make him gag.
“Again—”
Another cycle.
Another shock.
Another check.
Nothing.
The room seemed to dim around the edges.
Not the light.
Just his ability to stay inside it.
“We’re losing him,” one of the medics muttered.
“We already did,” the other replied, quieter.
There was a pause then.
Short.
Heavy.
“Time of—”
Ymir didn’t hear the rest.
He couldn’t.
The words blurred together, lost under the rushing in his ears and the way his own breathing had gone shallow and uneven again. The kitchen no longer felt real. Nothing in it lined up correctly anymore.
Kane lay still.
Completely still.
The medics stopped moving over him with urgency. Their hands slowed, then stilled, one of them reaching to pull a sheet from the bag beside him.
White.
Clean.
It spread over Kane’s body in a single, practiced motion, covering everything but his face at first.
Then that too.
Gone.
Ymir stared at it.
His chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the wound now.
“No,” he said again, barely audible.
Not because he wanted Kane alive.
Because of what it meant.
The officers shifted around him.
“We’re taking him out,” one said.
Hands grabbed Ymir’s arms again, hauling him upward before his legs were ready to support him. The sudden movement made the room tilt violently, black creeping in at the edges of his vision.
“Wait—” he gasped.
No one did.
They pulled him toward the door.
Past the kitchen.
Past the blood.
Past the shape on the floor that had already been turned into something else in everyone else’s eyes.
“He attacked me,” Ymir tried again, the words weaker now, falling apart as they left him. “He—Mira—”
The name didn’t land anywhere.
Didn’t catch.
Didn’t matter.
Because by the time they dragged him out of the house—
it was already over.
It took too long.
That was the first thing Madaline thought as she stood in the yard with Mira and Ethan, the police lights washing over all of them in hard, flashing color. Red. Blue. Red again. Each pulse caught on the side of the house, on the ambulance doors, on the officers moving in and out of the front entrance with clipped, urgent purpose.
Too long.
She didn’t know what was happening inside.
That was the worst part.
Not seeing it.
Not knowing.
Just standing there while other people made decisions, rushed past, spoke into radios, drew weapons, and moved like the shape of the disaster had already been decided for them.
Mira stood beside her, shaking.
Really shaking.
One of the paramedics had tried to come near her at first, but the police had pushed everyone back until the house was secure. So Mira remained in the yard instead, arms wrapped tightly around herself, blood still dark across the front of her sweater, her face pale and wet with tears that seemed to keep coming no matter how many times she dragged her hands across them.
Ethan stayed close to her.
Close enough that his shoulder brushed hers every so often when he shifted, like he was trying to hold her upright without making it obvious he thought she might fall.
Madaline stood on her other side.
And the three of them watched the house like it might explain itself if they stared long enough.
It didn’t.
An officer came out first.
Then another.
Then—
Ymir.
Madaline’s breath caught so hard it hurt.
He looked terrible.
Worse than terrible.
He looked like something dragged out of the inside of a nightmare and forced into daylight. His hands were cuffed behind his back. His shirt was soaked through at the middle, dark with blood, the bandage around his stomach already stained through in spreading patches. Two officers half-held, half-walked him down the porch steps because he was clearly not steady enough to manage them alone.
His curls were damp with sweat, stuck in places to his forehead and temples. His face had gone pale beneath the flush of blood loss and pain, his mouth set in a hard, disbelieving line that kept breaking every time he tried to speak.
“No—” Madaline heard herself say.
The word came out before she could stop it.
Mira made a strangled sound beside her.
Not loud.
Not yet.
Just enough to make Ethan turn toward her immediately.
Ymir looked up then.
Not at the officers.
At them.
At the yard.
At the people watching him be taken out of the house like he was the worst thing in it.
His eyes found Madaline first.
Then Ethan.
Then Mira.
Something changed in his face when he saw her.
Not shock.
Not confusion.
Something more desperate than that.
“It’s not—” he started, his voice raw enough that Madaline barely recognized it. “She—”
An officer jerked him forward before he could finish.
“Keep moving.”
Ymir stumbled.
Hard.
One of the officers swore under his breath and caught him before he hit the gravel, hauling him upright again by the arm.
Madaline’s stomach turned.
This did not look like the version of events that had been shouted into being a few minutes ago.
This looked ugly.
Messy.
Wrong in a way she couldn’t quite articulate because her heart was moving too fast and the police lights kept strobing over all of them and Mira was shaking beside her and Ethan was already stepping forward, jaw tight.
“What happened to him?” Ethan demanded.
One of the officers glanced at him only briefly. “Back up, sir.”
“He’s hurt.”
“He’ll be treated.”
Madaline stared at Ymir.
He looked back once more, trying to say something again, but it came out broken and unfinished. Blood had dried near one side of his mouth. His breathing looked wrong. Too shallow. Too fast. The longer she looked, the less he resembled the person Mira had described and the more he just looked like someone who had barely stayed upright long enough to be blamed.
Then Mira screamed.
It tore out of her so suddenly and so sharply that everyone in the yard turned.
Madaline spun too.
The stretcher was coming out.
Two paramedics pushed it down the porch, one at each end, the wheels rattling once as they hit the lip of the front steps and lowered carefully onto the path. A white sheet covered the body from chest to feet. Another medic walked beside it, one hand steadying the frame, face set into that blank, professional stillness that somehow always made things worse.
Kane’s face was visible.
Still.
Too still.
Madaline’s whole body went cold.
Mira lurched forward before anyone could stop her.
“No—no, no, no—”
Her voice shattered as she ran toward the stretcher, and Ethan moved on instinct, catching her around the waist before she could throw herself fully onto it. She fought him without meaning to, not trying to escape him so much as trying to reach something that had already gone too far away.
“Kane!” she sobbed. “Kane, no—”
The sound of it ripped through the yard.
Madaline had never heard anyone cry like that.
Not even at funerals.
This was different.
This was raw enough to make her feel it in her own chest, sharp and immediate, even through the shock of everything else.
Ethan held onto Mira harder now, one arm braced across her middle, the other catching her shoulders as she folded into him and then away and then into him again, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe through it.
“Mira—hey—hey—”
His own voice had gone rough now, whatever control he’d been holding onto slipping badly around the edges.
Madaline moved toward them without deciding to.
The stretcher rolled closer.
Kane’s face passed through alternating bands of blue and red light, each flash making him look slightly different and somehow no less dead. There was blood dried near one side of him, dark against skin that had already gone too pale. His eyes were closed. His mouth slack in a way that made it impossible to pretend he might just be unconscious.
One of the paramedics reached up and pulled the sheet the rest of the way over his face.
Mira made another broken sound, quieter this time and somehow even worse.
The officers were still dragging Ymir toward the police car.
Madaline saw it only because she looked back at exactly the wrong moment.
He had twisted as much as the cuffs and the blood loss allowed, his attention fixed entirely on the stretcher now. Whatever he’d been trying to say before had died in his face. He just stared.
Not angry.
Not feral.
Not crazed.
Horrified.
The expression struck her so hard she almost stopped walking altogether.
One of the officers shoved his head down as they forced him into the back of the car.
The door slammed.
Madaline flinched.
Everything after that happened too fast again.
Paramedics trying to get Mira onto a bench near the ambulance.
Officers moving around the house.
Someone asking Ethan questions.
Someone else trying to ask Madaline if she needed medical attention.
But all she could really see—
was the white sheet disappearing into the ambulance
and the police car with Ymir inside it
and Mira, scream-crying into Ethan’s arms like the world had just split open in front of her.
And for one thin, slippery second that vanished almost as soon as it came—
Madaline thought:
Something about this is wrong.